What’s the Best Parent Communication App for Teachers and Coaches?
One of the most dreaded phrases in K-12 is the parent-teacher conference. From the teachers down to the students, these discussions have a bad reputation for possibly being one of the most uncomfortable exchanges you’ll ever have.
Outside the classroom, parent-teacher communications are even harder. You either send papers home that get buried in their backpacks, or emails that get lost in flooded inboxes. Services like TeamSnap or Remind may help you get the message through, but they still make parents feel like their voice isn’t being heard. Some of them ask you to pay an extra subscription fee to access their best features.
What if there was a better way for parents and teachers to communicate? With BAND, your parent-teacher communications just got better.
With BAND, you can still send SMS and email alerts of your posts to your group. These texts are sent right from your phone so you can send as many as you’d like without any extra charge so long as your phone plan includes unlimited SMS. All of BAND’s features are available for free.
But what if you want more than a simple reminder? BAND is a more holistic communication channel for you to stay in touch with teachers and coaches.
We would like to invite you to take a look at six reasons BAND is the best way for parents to stay connected.
1) SMS/Email Alerts for Posts
The only way to fully experience everything BAND has to offer is to use the app. But because we want to make sure your message gets delivered to everyone in your group, we also offer a “Subscriber” feature for any non-app users.
Admins can add group members who aren’t on BAND as ‘Subscribers’ on the Member List. If you wish to keep your Subscribers updated, simply click on a post to send them an SMS or email! You can also set up your own email notifications to get regular content updates from all your Bands.
2) Private Community Board with Read-Receipts
With BAND, coaches and teachers can post homework on the group board, along with any additional resources such as files, images, or videos. Parents and students/athletes can ask questions directly by leaving a comment so everyone can see it, saving coaches/teachers tons of time by avoiding the repetitive, one-way communication.
You can also monitor who’s read your posts, so you’ll know when something’s been missed by someone.
Everything you post stays in the group, so parents can post with confidence that what they share will only be seen by the people they’re sharing it with.
Admins also have the option to restrict member privileges and disable their ability to post, comment, or open 1-on-1 chats with other members in the group.
3) Signup, Attendance, and Poll
BAND has tons of great features to make it easier to reach a consensus and stay on task. With BAND’s Signup feature, you can ask parents and students to sign up for different tasks, so you can be sure that you have enough people to get the job done.
Polls allow you to quickly survey your group and make decisions, so you can avoid all the back and forth. Attendance Sheets can make it easy for you to confirm that everyone’s checked in when they arrive at the event.
You can also print out Signup Sheets, and Attendance Sheets to hand out to your classrooms. With both a digital and a physical copy for them to refer back to, families will have all the information they need to be informed.
4) Events, RSVPs, and Reminders
BAND makes it easy to keep track of upcoming events with the Event Calendar. One of our strongest features, BAND’s Calendar helps you plan ahead with features like Member and Guest RSVP, so you can know how many people are coming.
With automatic Event Reminders, your members won’t miss any important activities, and with all the important information right there on BAND, they’ll be ready for activity day.
5) Video, Photo, and File Sharing
With BAND, you can directly upload images and videos to the Photo Album so you don’t have to worry about uploading dozens or hundreds of photos of your events and activities.
You can also share photos, videos, and files in Chatrooms and Posts. Each Post supports up to ten attachments of any type, and there are no restrictions on character length. You can even see and search all of your previous file attachments using the “More” tab.
6) Chat and Voice Call
It’s easy to start a private or group chat or voice call, so parents and teachers can stay in touch without having to share their personal phone number or sort through emails. With group conversations, parents are able to answer each other’s questions, which saves tons of time.
100% Free, 100% of the Time
As people have been asking whether BAND will be adding any additional fees for sending SMS alerts, subscriptions, or other mobile features like group calls and chats, we would like to assure you once again that all of our awesome features will be 100% free for everyone on BAND.
Learn why BAND is perfect for all kinds of groups:
